Navy vet authors take up Tom Clancy’s torch
In their previous lives, Brian Andrews was a nuclear engineer and an officer on a fast attack submarine while Jeffrey Wilson was both a vascular surgeon and jet pilot who conducted combat operations with an East Coast-based SEAL team.
Now a bestselling writing duo, Andrews and Wilson take charge of Tom Clancy’s legacy with summer’s 24th Jack Ryan book, “Act of Defiance.” They just released their newest hightech thriller “Four Minutes” (Blackstone).
“One of our favorite things to do is take a particular concept, like time travel in this case, and imagine,” Andrews, 50, explained. “What would it be like if somebody was to invent limited time travel? What if you could travel to the future, say a month in the future — but you could only stay for four minutes? What would that allow you to do?
“At first glance, you’d say, ‘Wow! This is incredible. If a terrorist attack is going to happen, we see it in advance and we can stop it.’ Of course, that perfect solution never turns out exactly the way that you think. What this new ability really does is just create new problems.”
Wilson and Andrews met at Manhattan’s annual Thriller Fest where the two Navy veterans became friends, then writing partners. “We’re both familyoriented people with kids about the same age. We had just so much in common,” Wilson, 60, said.
“A year or two later, it was Brian’s idea to start co-writing together. That first novel was done in four months and now 20-something novels later, what we do is we write together.”
Summer’s release of “Act of Defiance” is, Wilson noted, “Our first installment of at least three in the Tom Clancy-Jack Ryan universe. Obviously, it’s both flattering and intimidating to have been invited to do that.”
It was the editor for the Clancy estate (who had worked with Clancy when he was alive), Tom Colgan, who chose them.
“Honestly, it was flattering. And intimidating,” Andrews admitted.
“When we got on the call with Tom he said, ‘Look, your ‘Defiance’ will fall on the 40th anniversary of ‘The Hunt for Red October.’ Brian being a submarine officer? That was sort of a done deal. We were definitely, definitely going to do it,” Wilson said.
“Clancy’s Jack Ryan books were a big reason why we both saw careers in the Navy and why Brian wound up in submarines. So it’s an amazing experience to do it. It’s been really fun. It was, just creatively, an exciting thought, to be able to honor this universe that Clancy built by honoring his very first book in the universe.”